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Life balance is crucial for stress relief.

Developing life balance is one of the most effective and necessary ways of achieving and sustaining real stress relief. When your life is out of balance, stress levels go way up.

The stressed-out feelings you experience are your body's alarms warning you that you need to make some changes. If you want to experience real stress relief, you can't ignore these warnings.

Having an out of balance life is right at the top of the list of leading causes of stress. Apart from restoring balance to your life, you are unlike to experience lasting stress relief.

Another reason finding balance in your life is important is because happiness and life balance are strongly related. As your life becomes more balanced, you experience more happiness. As your life becomes more out of balance, you become more unhappy.

Achieving life balance isn't so hard.

Creating balance in your life isn't easy, but it also isn't hard.

It requires you to be aware of and live according to your purpose in life.

It also requires that you set goals that can lead you toward living a life of balance. Furthermore, it requires that you become aware of support and resources that can help you achieve those goals. Many of you are probably blind to the support and resources available to you. Nevertheless, they are there for you.

Another reason that balance in life isn't easy to achieve and maintain is because your life is ever changing and balance tends to be elusive. Some of you think it is unachievable.

I don't.

When you see developing a balanced life as being unachievable, you are thinking of it wrongly. You are probably mis-defining what life balance is or over complicating it.

I explain all of this in my free online course, How to Avoid 3 Common Mistakes Busy People Make That Keep Them Feeling Overwhelmed, Stressed-out, and Headed for Burnout!

You can bring more balance into your life and start living a more joyful life by making small, well thought out lifestyle tweaks. Nigel Marsh addresses this in his brief but very interesting TED Talk.

Be sure to focus on life work balance.

As you plan the changes you need to make to improve the balance in your life, you will probably find yourself focusing on life work balance. Occupational stress is a huge concern for most people. 

Many of you are trying to find stress relief at work and avoid job burnout. You need to experience more of the flow state.

Job burnout seems to be experienced in all occupations and at each level of work life. In fact, it seems to start before you even get your first job. Student burnout and college stress are experienced by many students. Homeschool burnout even happens in the lives of home schooled children and their parent/teachers.

Once you are out of school and working the struggle continues. A lot of you find yourselves needing office stress relief. Even a home based business can result in home based business burnout.

Others of you are struggling with...

• nursing burnout
• physician burnout
• pastor burnout
• teacher burnout

...and the list goes on and on.

Focus on all areas of your life.

As you work on finding balance, you need to focus on more than just your work life. You need to focus on all aspects of your life.

Don't forget play. As the saying goes, all work and no play makes you a dull boy or girl! For life to be balanced it has to include fun. Playing can be a fun way to relieve stress.

Remember to consider stress at home. Family stress is often an issue; thus, you may need to make changes in regard to your family life.

When considering stress at home, a topic that often needs to be addressed is stress in relationships. Apart from having thriving family relationships and/or thriving friendships, it is hard to maintain balance in your life.

Stress and pregnancy or parenting stress may be what you need to deal with.

When there is a family member who has a serious illness, disability, or special needs, caregiver stress becomes an issue of concern.

Be sure not to leave out your spiritual life. As a Christ follower, I believe maintaining a balanced Christian life is important.

Don't be overwhelmed.

If all of this seems overwhelming, don't get discouraged. You need to follow the advice that Dr. Leo Marvin (played by Richard Dreyfuss) told his client, Bob Wiley (played by Bill Murray) in the movie What About Bob, "Just take baby steps."

To view the clip, click here.

If you need additional help, check out my online courses at Life Balance Breakthroughs Academy.

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